Quotes About Belonging

It would be great if people could guess right off that I am Japanese-Finnish-American. But then I'd have to be wearing a kimono and pulling a reindeer.

It's been such a special feeling pulling on that Scotland jersey since I was 16 years old.

The fact that I was black and desirous to do my work, the other kids would call me a coconut, as if I were somehow attempting to be white. The bullying was real: I'd get punched, spat at, terrible things.

I could not become an American citizen. I would not like to become a citizen of a country that has capital punishment.

I used to hang out with a bunch of old punk rockers when I was a little kid.

I was the only punk rocker at my high school. And there were at least a handful of black kids who liked hip-hop. Both were kind of the new music of the day, and it was lonely being the only punk.

I will always consider myself a punk because of those experiences in high school. It will always be a part of me.

I'm finding out what part of punk culture or white indie culture I actually still want to hold onto - What are the values? What are the contributions that I actually like? - and it not coming from a place of desperation or wanting to be embraced or wanting approval, essentially.

I turned to punk because I didn't fit in anywhere else.

For us, punk rock and even hardcore music was something we did because we didn't fit in in high school. We had nowhere to go, so we went to shows.

We have to reappropriate the concept of laicite (secularism) so we can explain to our young pupils that whatever their faith, they belong to this idea, and they're not excluded. Secularism is not something against them; it protects them.

I don't think there is only one Arab culture or a pure Arabness. We are very multiple, especially our generation, which is very multilayered.

I am a fairly mongrelized person - you know I've been a migrant my whole life, and it's hard to think of myself as any pure one thing. And so I take it, I guess, very personally - this notion that migrants are bad and that mixing is bad and that people from other places are bad.

I love the story of Quasimodo, about someone who feels like they don't belong but is pure of heart and has good intentions. It's a great message for a younger audience.

One time, I went to school, and they asked us all to find out where our roots were. It's goin' around the class, and the kids were going, 'I'm Swedish-German' or 'I'm English-Irish.' They got to me and I said, 'Pure Kentuckian.'

It's impossible to be ethnically pure.

The one good thing about our school was the Cadets; I chose to be in the Navy, purely for the sailor's outfit. A pity we had to give them back.

I went to a very mean school and was bullied like crazy. I was a bit of a goth with purple hair, and I was also part of the drama group, which was filled with actors and writers and wasn't really accepted by the rest of the school.

He felt like the invisible boy. When he got to be part of the mystery Men he felt like he had a purpose.

To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people, each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection.

When I was writing or competing in individual sports, it felt unfulfilling and lonely. When I was able to find a group of people I believed in and liked, that all worked in pursuit of a common goal, it felt incredibly rewarding.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is part of our constitutional rights and it belongs to everybody.

To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

No kid is seeking anything when he joins a gang; he's always fleeing something. He's not being pulled; he's being pushed by the circumstances in which he finds himself.